ST. CROIX, WI—Airworthy Aerospace Industries Inc., a manufacturer of aircraft interior components, is investing $4.6 million to expand its assembly plant here. The company is expected to create 45 new jobs.
ZEELAND, MI—For the past decade and a half, office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller Inc. has been practicing sustainability: earning a profit, protecting the environment and improving their community.
HUNTSVILLE, AL—Construction on Polaris Industries’s new ATV assembly plant here is progressing quickly. The $48 million 775,000-square-foot facility is on track for a spring 2016 startup.
CAMBRIDGE, MA—Engineers at MIT have found a way to give robots more dexterity by using the environment as a helping hand. The researchers developed a model that predicts the force with which a robotic gripper needs to push against various fixtures in the environment in order to adjust its grasp on an object.
DETROIT—Ford engineers have morphed into exterminators—and for good reason. A common form of spider, it turns out, likes to nest under the hood in vehicles. That sounds harmless enough, but it can cause big problems, including possible fuel tank cracks that can ignite vehicle fires.
TOLEDO, OH—Johnson Controls is expanding the production of absorbent glass mat batteries for automotive applications. Since 2012, the automotive supplier has devoted $130 million to manufacturing this battery technology.
PARIS—Airbus has developed “connected glasses” for technicians to wear on the A330 final assembly line. The glasses enable precise positioning—down to the millimeter—during the cabin installation marking process, when operators designate the exact location where seats and cabin furnishings should be affixed inside the aircraft.